


Faith

by Kobo



Series: Jyn Erso Appreciation Week [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Jyn Erso Appreciation Week, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, faith - Freeform, if you so desire, so it could be, though no one is explicitly mentioned to be dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:23:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kobo/pseuds/Kobo
Summary: In which Luke Skywalker is curious about the kyber crystal around Jyn's neck.Written for Jyn Erso Appreciation Week, Day 1: Faith





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

> So I've currently got a goal to respond to at least four of these prompts (as well as keep writing [Luctor et Emergo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10797438/chapters/23951727)!) this week. I'm also challenging myself to keep Cassian's presence in these fics to a minimum, not because I don't love Cassian (you all know I do) but in my attempt to keep these focused on Jyn. 
> 
> Fair warning, I took several liberties on canon about kyber crystals. But, hey, that's what Fanfiction is for, right?
> 
> Also, this fic is entirely unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine.

“Good morning!”

Jyn glanced up from her bowl – what was the Alliance pretending this food was? Porridge of some kind? – to see a young man with floppy blond hair sit down across from her. It wasn’t a mystery who the boy was, of course. Ever since the Battle of Yavin, the name Luke Skywalker became common place over Yavin. Jyn had seen him wandering around base, his wide innocent eyes scanning the fleet of battered X-Wings and his glowing smile greeting every rebel who spoke to him.

What was a mystery was why Luke Skywalker was seeking her out. While the Rebellion immediately deemed Luke a friendly, likeable guy, it did not do the same for Jyn. After she and the batter remains of Rogue One returned from Scarif, she’d spent several days locked in the medical ward, healing. She was released for the celebrations after the Death Star was destroyed, but, still feeling the weight of the past few weeks sitting heavy on her chest, she’d avoided the other rebels and their drunken cheers.

Mixing mutiny and a standoffish attitude did not make friends in the Rebellion, apparently.

In the hustle of preparing to evacuate Yavin – the Death Star may be destroyed, but the Empire knew where they were now – most of the rebels left her alone. So, why was the most notable rebel of them all stopping by her table for breakfast? Surely Red Squadron or Captain Solo – or literally anyone else in this rebellion – would have welcomed him with open arms.

At Jyn’s silence (and what else did Luke expect? It wasn’t even 0700 yet), Luke starting talking again. “I wanted to introduce myself. I’m—“

“You’re Luke Skywalker,” Jyn finished for him, her voice neutral. “The hero of the rebellion. I know who you are.”

Luke smiled. Jyn marveled that the boy was only a couple years younger than her; he just seemed so _innocent_. “And you’re Jyn Erso. Also a hero of the rebellion.”

Jyn stared for a moment, unsure what else he wanted from her.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said after the moment stretched long enough to become awkward. “For Scarif.”

Jyn shook her head. “You don’t need to do that.”

Luke gave her another smile and a quick shrug. “I wanted to. But I have another question for you, too.”

“Yes?”

“It’s about that crystal you’re wearing.”

Jyn froze at the mention of her kyber crystal, which was currently safely hidden under her shirt. Unless Luke had seen it at some other point – and Jyn considered that unlikely, because the crystal was almost always hidden from view – he knew about the necklace just like Chirrut had. With wary eyes, Jyn examined the boy again. Rumors floated around base that Luke Skywalker was Force sensitive (who else could have made that shot on the Death Star?) and most people had seen his lightsaber. But Jyn had been around for enough years to understand Force sensitivity was not a requirement to own a lightsaber; for the right amount of credits, there were markets for such a weapon.

Jyn leaned closer to Luke, resting her elbows on the table. “It’s true, then? You are Force sensitive?”

Luke nodded, glancing down at his fidgeting hands. “Well I only just started learning, but my father was a Jedi.” He met Jyn’s eyes as he continued. “I want to become one, too.”

Something about the determination behind his words moved Jyn. This was a whole new world for him – the Rebellion along with learning how to be a Jedi – yet he embraced it so fully.

“Why?”

He cocked his head to the side at her question. “Why what?”

“Why are you so sure you could become a Jedi like your father?”

Luke shrugged again, but he smiled too. “Faith, I guess. It’s served me pretty well so far.”

_Faith._

The crystal resting on Jyn’s sternum seemed to warm at the word, like it knew someone nearby believed in its power.

After another moment’s pause, Jyn reached around her neck to pull the crystal out. She held it in her hand for a moment, watching the way it caught the early morning light. Luke’s eyes grew wide as he too examined the crystal.

“You can hear it, can’t you?” Jyn asked and Luke nodded. “Chirrut can, too.”

“Where’d you get it?” Luke asked, reaching out to touch it. On automatic instinct, Jyn pulled it closer to her. No one besides for her had touched the necklace in many years. Those who had… Well, their hands and fingers didn’t leave in the same condition. Luke seemed to understand, pulling his hand back to his side of the table.

“My mother,” Jyn said softly, unsure if Luke heard her over the noise of the mess hall. “She was a geologist before the time of the Empire. She studied the crystals.” She met Luke’s eyes again. “She believed in it all. The Force.”

“But you don’t?”

Jyn snorted. “The last thing she told me before she died was to trust the Force. Whole lot of good that did her.”

Luke stayed quiet for a moment, scratching at the table top. Then he cleared his throat, saying, “The Empire killed my aunt and uncle. That’s when I decided to become a Jedi, but then…” He drew in a deep breath, still avoiding her eyes. “Then Old Ben died on the Death Star, and I thought that path was gone, too.”

Jyn heard the talk, that the Clone Wars general Obi Wan Kenobi had been part of the plan to rescue the Princess from the Death Star. Hearing his name brought back old memories of her time on Coruscant; her mother had known him, apparently, and was using their desire to hunt the man down as proof for her father that the Empire was not what it said it was. Jyn understood none of it at the time – likely never would have remembered the conversations if his name had not come up again – but she understood how he could have mentored and taught Luke, shaping him into a Jedi that would be the shining beacon of hope for the Rebellion.

“It wasn’t until I was on the Death Star run that I really understood,” Luke continued. He dragged his eyes away from the table to meet Jyn’s, desperate for her to understand. “I heard his voice. Still watching over me and ready to teach me. He may be dead, but, with the Force, he’ll never be truly gone.” He gave her a half smile. “Maybe your mother does the same thing.”

Jyn stared at the farm boy. Part of her longed to punch him, give him a black eye to mess up the perfect angel persona he had going on, but the other part longed to listen, to hear him explain the faith that her mother held so dear to her, even in death, and to help her understand the burning flame of hope that shone through him.

Before she changed her mind, Jyn ripped the kyber crystal off her neck, placing it on the table in front of Luke. Her neck felt cold and light without the necklace and her fingers itched to restore it to its proper place, but she kept them back as Luke reached, not for the necklace, but to his hip. He pulled out his lightsaber and placed it beside the kyber crystal.

For a few second, nothing happened. The objects just laid there, inanimate against the table. After a moment, however, the kyber crystal twitched towards the lightsaber. It even seemed to glow a little brighter, shining in a way Jyn had never seen before.

No, she told herself: the light was simply reflecting off the crystal; someone must have jostled the table to send it closer to Luke’s lightsaber. It wouldn’t move of its own accord.

Luke, however, grinned, like he just won a large pile of credits in a game of sabacc.

“See?” He said, motioning to the pair of objects. “They recognize each other.”

Jyn raised her eyebrows at him. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Maybe,” Luke shrugged. “Like I said, it’s all about faith.” He picked the necklace off the table and handed it to Jyn. She accepted it, pulling it back around her neck, leaving it on top of her shirt this time. With one last smile, Luke rose from the table.

Before he walked away, Jyn called out to him. “Wait, Luke! What was your question?”

“I wanted to know if you were a believer in the Force, because of that necklace and, well,” Luke motioned around the room. “Because you’re here. But I can tell that’s a more complicated answer.”

“I don’t have faith in the idea of some mystical force holding the universe together.”

“My friend Han—“ _Only Luke Skywalker would refer to Han Solo as his friend two days after meeting him,_ Jyn mentally rolled her eyes “—he said pretty much the same thing.” Luke shrugged. “So you never know.”

Jyn watched the new hope of the rebellion stride off, lightsaber swinging by his hip, people calling out to him across the mess hall, and thought about his faith, the same faith her mother swore in her childhood. The same faith that, in a way, powered the Rebellion. No rebel left for a mission without hearing “May the Force be with you,” after all. Jyn had said it to Rogue One as they pulled away from the Yavin base.

Had she accepted it, though? Had the stories her mother told her – those tales that tucked her into bed at night and lulled her to sleep – been true? Was the existence of people like Luke Skywalker and Chirrut Imwe enough to prove it to her?

Was Rogue One’s success on Scarif and Luke Skywalker’s defeat of the Death Star a sign of this power directing the universe? Was, as Luke suggested, her mother – and her father and Saw – looking down on her now, watching the decisions she made?

She gripped the crystal tight for a moment, running her finger over its familiar hard edges and cool surface.

She didn’t know, really, but she also found it didn’t matter. Jyn Erso had faith, after all.

She had faith in the survival skills she’d learned over the years, and the truncheons that so often protected her. She had faith in a good blaster. She had faith in the rebels who’d accompanied her on Rogue One.

None of her faith came with deadly swords of light or shining crystals to be mined, but it kept her alive all these years, both with the Partisans and on her own.

And that, Jyn decided as she pushed back from the table, was all she needed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as [RxbxlCaptain](https://rxbxlcaptain.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi!


End file.
